Well... I can see that I took too long of a break from this thread.

 

Yikes :D

 

Sorry all, I have other work to do and I can always count on many hours when i come in here and Its all been on my own personal time so its bound to be intermittent.... I thought I said that early on.

Before I get back to the few questions I did get... I want to make a request. I did not start this thread to provide a showcase for rants.  I wanted to answer legit questions so that you might get real answers that you could be reasonable sure were "official" End of story. Can we please try to limit the back and forth to honest simple Q&A?

Since the in the 4 pages or so of comments and questions there are a lot of repeats, Ill just do an opening monologue where ill address a lot of it.

Why Am I here?

This is not DAZ PR, per se. I was not told to start this thread, I did it myself because of things i was reading here that weren't quite right and I thought this might be the best way to help out. We do not assume that everyone goes to our forum, so that really wasn't the place I wanted to do this.

Why did we start the Poser Section of our Forum?

Simple... based on this interaction I motioned at a meeting that we do it in order to demonstrate our goodwill and desire to co-exist to the Poser-oriented members of our community.  They all said "OK" "GOOD IDEA".... there wasn't a single nay-sayer.  I know that this will come as a shock to some of you... but Poser and DS users dont always get along... we are like siamese fighting fish... its best to keep us in separate tanks for the time being. I thought that it might relieve some pressure if Poser types could ask poser questions in a friendly environment without getting ganged up on. We have been directing attention and relevant threads there for organizational efficiency and to Jumpstart awareness of its existance.

When are you going to stop being forum Nazis?

The fundamental difference between this forum and ours is that ours exists to supplement the sales of our own products. One way to do that is to provide a FRIENDLY community where new users and those needing help or fellowship can go to receive it. We have every right to take a heavy hand to clear out ugliness of all types in order to maintain that environment. We try to be fair, but we are human. I wouldn't wish the job of Forum Mod at DAZ 3D on my worst enemy and the fact is that our people, especially Richard H. do an amazing job. (I dont think he is human and I know he never sleeps) Our mods do their best in a difficult situation. In order to help them out, we will be shoring up their training and providing a clearer list of regulations. this does not mean that you will be able to rant at will. It does mean that you will be able to expect fair treatment and that if you screw up, it will be with full knowledge of what you are doing and why its not allowed.  THis wont happen overnight.

If you are upset because you arent being heard... trust me, we hear it all. It would help if people would stop grandstanding, seeking attention or trying to prove their "rightness" on both sides and just make some friggin cool art.

What is the deal with Hexagon, Carrara and Bryce?

The unfortunate answer is that I do not have the authority to shed much light on this.  I will say that one possible goal of our company (and I hope this isnt surprising) is to eventually wrap up all the functionality of our somewhat incompatible collection of software titles into one program or at least a more complementary suite of programs (think the Adobe suite for example).

Carrara already has absorbed most of what was good about Bryce and Hexagon and its getting full DS support too. This doesnt mean we will move everything to Carrara, but it does seem logical to unify our diverse code bases.

Right now we are in a heavy dev cycle on shoring up DS4 and making sure that it is the best platform possible for adding new usability and/or functionality in the future. Even so, we managed a great bug fix update to Hex and continue to Develop the blazes out of Carrara. Its getting a massive update soon in 8.5...heck, I may even start using it.  BFurner and DAZ_Spooky are huge Carrara advocates here and on the case.

Where is the Documentation?

I have answered this many many times already but whats one more? We acknowledge that we should have taken care of this sooner... but beleive you me, you would cringe if i told you of all the half started, lackluster, unsatisfactory, crummy attempts we have had. Everyone here is too busy with their assigned tasks to write docs,  its a full time job... So, we hire new people.  NOT ONE TIME in all the many attempts at DS docs has the person done a satisfactory job. Regardless of what you think you know... you do not know the whole story. None of that makes it any less our responsibility, but we are not dealing with something so easy that a monkey on word processor could simply bang it out. It has escalated to the point that three project managers, several Production artists, the lead designer and a few key others have been completely or partially pulled off normal duties to make this doc thing happen once and for all. It hurts our output of product and is very expensive for those people to be doing that work, but that should give you a signal of how important we feel it is. It will get done. It is all some of us are doing.

I do wonder, however, what some people will complain about once they are finally written. :D

Oh... it is highly unlikely that we will be issuing hard copy documentation. This is 2011, nobody is doing that anymore.... and i doubt our customers would pay for the cost of it through higher prices. We will provide a method to DL it for offline use or printing. 

The Great Installer debate.

Nobody believes that installers or zipfiles alone is the best solution to the download and install problems we face. We are examining the situation and will decide on something we feel works best for us, our existing base AND the aquisition and engagement of new customers. Along with documentation, this is one of our highest priorities. What ever system we adopt will be the system and it will not be some arbitrary change for change sake. It will be as thoroughly and carefully considered as anything like this can be. In the end, if it is something you cant live with... then we will be sad about that. We will be very likely to be testing certain paradigms soon and there will be information and opinions sought. We have heard the arguments of the zip lobbyists and Installer fantatics and will consider all their points.

Dynamic cloth and Hair

There isnt a single person here, to my knowledge, that doesnt want Dynamics/Physics in Studio. It isnt like waving a magic wand.... it takes serious development. Once we feel our foundation is bulletproof enough to support it, we will start in on cool new features again. You cant beat us up for pursuing new features instead of polish, then complain when we decide to act on that criticism.

What did you mean about the Poser SR?

I meant that SM has worked with us to help make our CR2 exporter work better. The changes they made in order to help us will have to be implemented with a service release. These changes have been made, we have tested them, you cannot use them until you get an upcoming upgrade.  This is not the full functionality of Genesis, just one more step down the road. I cannot be specific about what the exact changes/additions to the code were or what added functionality there will be, you will have to be wait like everyone else. :D 

Did we rush Genesis to beat Poser Pro 2012 to market?

Heck no! We had no idea that there was even going to be a release let alone when it would be. Had we known we would have done some things very different. Now, we probably knew before you did... but not by much.

Store problems

Whatever your problems are with our store, (search included) they will hopefully go away soon. We are in the process of a MAJOR overhaul to our entire website and store and are implementing a new eCommerce engine. No, I cant say any more than that.

 

If I didnt get your question answered, I am sorry, please post again.  Do me a favor though, please do so with brevity and Good humour.

 

Thanks!

Rand